UndertowIQ · The open measurement standard

Measure your own station.

The ratings monopoly's first trick is the oldest one: you have to pay them to be measured at all. No check, no watermark, no number — invisible, whoever is listening. So don't ask them. Drop two lines into your own player and every real listener flows into an open census. AQH, Cume, TSL — the exact metrics, computed from actual listening you can see. Numbers you own, that cite no one, that no panel decides.

Two lines. Your station. Your numbers.

<script src="…/rdns/beacon.js" data-callsign="KAZM"></script>

Paste it on the page that hosts your player. That's it. The beacon counts a listener while your player page is open and active — start, heartbeat, stop — and reports it (deduped by a salted hash, never a raw IP) to the open census. Want it play-accurate? Set window.__uiq_active = false when audio is paused and the beacon stops counting.

01 · EMBED

Add the line

One script tag on your player page, tagged with your call sign.

02 · MEASURE

Real ears, counted

Every actual listen becomes a real session — the same engine that computes the census book.

03 · OWN IT

Your numbers, live

Your AQH, Cume, and TSL appear on the census book — yours to cite, sell against, and verify.

Their model vs. this one

Pay to exist

  • You pay Nielsen to embed their watermark, or you're unmeasurable.
  • A panel of a few thousand estimates your audience.
  • The number is a black box; you can't see the method or the ears.
  • You license the result under terms that forbid republishing it.

Measure to exist

  • Free. Embed two lines; no fee, no watermark license, no gatekeeper.
  • A census — every real listener through your player, counted.
  • Open method, open math; the sessions are yours to inspect.
  • Your numbers. Publish them, sell against them, cite no one.

Honest by design: this is open measurement, so it's only as clean as the players that carry it — self-reported listening can be inflated the way any open metric can. That's the trade for transparency, and the opposite of a black box you can't audit. Relay-verified sessions and integrity checks harden it further; the point is that a station no longer needs anyone's permission to prove it has an audience.

The beacon is a few lines of open JavaScript; the census is the same engine behind the census book. the open book · the fine print · who owns the ears.